SO: SCHEHERAZADE ME!

It appeared as if
the very air were

asleep.

Even the dark was
asleep.

An harmonica stained
the night with itself.

An ache that stole
into the soul.

Snowflakes fell
in slow slow-motion

as if they were
sleep walking.

Time seemed to so-
lid-if-y

congeal about
the moment

frozen like a rabbit
in the headlights of life.

"Why me!"
the moment seemed to say
"Why me?"

"Awww shut up!"
I told it.

It shut up.

An obese moon
like a stray dog

tried to follow me
home but home

was the other side
of an ocean.

Still, it dogged
my every step.

The blind man kept on playing
as if

he were the soundtrack
to the film I

had become.

NYC was nothing like
its movies.

Only the cold
was real.

I dropped change
into the blind man's tin cup.

It made a music
all of its own.

He looked at me
with both his ears.

He smiled with
all of his self.

TALES OF THE KALENDER PRINCE
got lost

in the ensuing silence.

He mumbled a thanks
in an unknown tongue

maybe
Klingon.

The moment kept on
trying to find meaning

like an unsure actor
asking what's its motivation.

There was none
to be found.

My footsteps walked away
almost leaving me

behind.

TALES OF THE KALENDER PRINCE
started up again

as if the night had
pressed PLAY.

"Well....I'll be
Rimsky Korsakov'd!"

I attempted a smile.

It hurt.

The harmonica's voice
eclipsed by the police

siren.

THE ONLY EDEN

Granny unable to
see

would build me
touch by touch

with her blind fingertips
search for the face

she would create.

Here my cheekbone
coming into being

there an eyebrow
newly born

here an eye
there a philtrum

sculpted from sunlight
hewn from nothing

here blind seeing
fashioning me anew

her fingertips
butterflies

forming this
living portrait

of the face
I own.

Her fingers feeling
for each nuance...each tone

the music of me
plucked from thin air

one moment I am not
then I am

all there.

I made all the more
real.

More realer
that I could ever be

emerging from
her fingertips

as if I were
God's Adam

and this her tiny garden
the only Eden.

THE VERY THING IT WAS REQUIRED TO BE SHOWN
( for Jeremy )

"I like birds
more than books."

a young Edward
Thomas thinks

scribbling it
in bad Latin

on the fly leaf of
an algebra book.

A chaffinch chuckles.

"Vink...vink...vink!" it urges
in a regional accent.

"Fringilla Coelebs!"
Edward addresses it.

"Sheld-appel...spink..blue cap!"
the bird disowns its names

content with being
itself and itself

only.

It looks as if it has
just stepped out of the 15th century

illuminated maunuscript
The Shelbourne Missal.

"A caterpillar skeletonising a leaf
mmm...breakfast mefinks!"

The year  1895
madly in love with its own

sunlight
never such sunlight

as this
the window holds the scene

as if it were
a living painting.

The bird behind the glass
poetry in just being.

The torture of
an algebra class

"Quod erat demonstrandum."

NOW, WE IS: 60!

A Year 8 child
enquires how old I be?

"I be
just...60!"

He gasps.

"My God...you're very active
for 60!"

60 for him is
a distant planet

in a galaxy far far
from here.

Yea...another
dimension.

I smile my 60 year old smile
perfected by now.

I am starlight
that will only reach him

when he is
60 himself

if he ever
remembers what he has

long ago
forgotten

between this second &
the next...Time somehow
goes astray: here - the kiss

the camera captures us
with its black & white click
we all shadows and sunlight

the camera perched
upon a rugged rock
proud to have taken it by itself

us now
this "that" framed photo
kissed every morning by the sun

I watch us as
the photograph comes alive &
we step out into the wallpaper

we run amongst
the Paisley patterned paper
like a giant surreal field

here by the light switch
would have run the river
we cross it on a sunbeam

and where the mountain stood
now stands an overflowing bookcase
we scamper amongst its tomes

we our younger selves
arrive at the French window
where our town should be

our little animated us
so black & white & tiny
passing through the darkening glass

the sunlight of this today
newly beginning to
fade away

this sunset now
an unimaginable
40 years away

I let them run
escape their photographic fate
caught in the aspic of youth not age

this photograph we
unaware of death and that now
there is only...me

between this second &
the next: Time somehow
goes astray: here...the forever kiss.

THE SECRETION OF MEMORY

in an attic
( mottled with age)
mirror gazes upon mirror

a web attaches
( spun by a rather theatrical spider )
a primitive computer to a wall

a mouse scurries over
a dusty keyboard
the keys hungry for words

a tattered kite
stares at a sky
the clouds racing by

here is where
objects go to die
when the world abandons them

I too
an object abandoned
by my self

SCHRöDINGER'S SOCKS & THE REVENGE OF THE CAT

Schrödinger's cat
failed to see just what

all the fuss was
about?

It was all such
a reductive absurdum.

The cat couldn't understand
collapsing wave functions

decoherence
entanglement or whether

reality was really
quantum

to save its life.

It was aware of
one thing & one thing

only
. . .the diabolic device. . .

Cat in a metal box
with a Geiger counter

with a radioactive substance
blah blah de ****** blah

an atom decaying or something or
other &

releasing a hammer to smash
a phial of hydrocyanic acid.

Wot!

"I do not like thee Dr. Fell!"
thought the cat.

It was a very literary cat.

So all this palaver
about a cat( me? how! )

being both dead or alive or
neither dead or alive or

. . .wot!

So this is to be my great
to-be-or-not-to-be!

Welllll excuse me!
Say...doesn't the cat have his say?

So, I( clever cat that I am)
merely claw my way to the top &

disengage the device
by taking out the hammer.

So no cat was harmed
in the making of this

thought experiment.

It almost drove Schrödinger
out of his tiny little mind!

And he( hee hee )
never did discover

what ever
happened to his socks.

I forever stealing
one sock from a pair

from the open
washing machine.

Leaving him to ponder
just where socks go?

The other side of the Universe?
Oh come on Erwin...it's not

rocket science!

Now, to get back to
describing the behaviour of

a quantum entity.

"Mmmmm......mmmmmm?"

"Naw....I still don't get it!"

"Say ya couldn't see yer way
to giving me a scratch...could ya?"

"Up a bit....upabit....yeah...yeah
. . .there...just...there!"

DAY RIPENS INTO NIGHT

Lady on a balcony
remembering what it was

to touch & to caress the trembling
mouth of love

reading Rilke

even as his eyes
had turned to look

upon his death

holding the hand that would never
hold her hand again

( except in dreams )

somewhere in that sunset
his ashes

scattered to the morning
each atom of his being

still listening to the words
that you repeat...repeat

drinking the grief
of silent tears

to touch and to caress

your trembling mouth

my love.

I AM AMAZON

******* bather
one tanned proud breast
the other - white scar

unashamed of her
solitary breast
'I AM AMAZON!" she proclaims

the next year
the other breast is lost
she bares her chest to all

*******
breast-less
she smiles at being alive

"I offer myself to the sun
sans the emblems of woman
I spit in the cancer's face!"

dressed in only
birdsong
caressed by sun

"...TO MAKE MUSIC THAT WILL MELT THE STARS..."
( For Ray of the Pools )

So, here we are
in Flaubert's garden

as if he has just
gone in and

will be back
in a moment.

We wait for him
to return

chat amongst
ourselves

intimate
with his very thought

having travelled
through his mind

and not mere
summer tourists.

We feeling we have
just stepped out from

a time machine and
a servant informs us

we have just missed the master
who had been called away.

We pass his photograph
with his melancholy gaze

"...it seems to me,,,"
it whispers as we past

"...that the rain is falling
through my heart...

,,,causing it to crumble into ruins.”

We return to his rooms
the mummified heads

stare back at us
through glass

screaming silently
"We were once like you!"

A fly argues
with a window pane

much as it did
a hundred years ago

time lost
between the tick and the tock

but now the sunlight
grows old

and outside the 21st century
awaits

angry at our escape
into another time.

I shush it
with a wave of my hand

“There is not a particle of life
I tell it

...which does not bear poetry within it”

THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT
      RICHARD MILHOUS NIXON


It was...
Oct 5th - 1970.

A Monday.

It was the 278th day
of the year...only

87 days remaining
until the end of the year.

I knew I had to act now.
It was now...or never.

Time? I forget the time.
Time was standing still.

Huge clouds
menaced the horizon

impersonating an Armada
of Spanish Galleons.

Full sail ahead then.
I took a step into my future.

The smiling President drawing
nearer and nearer.

In Nass
the drenched crowed cheered.

In Newbridge now
flocks of children chase the car

like he was some
kinda Piper from Hamelin.

I kept a close eye on
the secret service

all dressed in the same suit
looking like clones

of one another
talking into their sleeves.

My gaze searches and settles
upon him

like the cross-hairs
of a ******'s rifle.

Sure he had called his setter
King Timahoe

after where his folks came from
another American looking for his roots

bolstering the Irish-American vote.

And now here he was
the man himself

in person
the 37th President.

Irish colleens dancing
upon a make-shift stage

in the square
of Kildare.

He's here oh so near
I can see the pores of his skin

a bead of sweat trickles into
that infamous Nixon grin.

Dare I do it now?
My hair falling into my eyes.

My mind flashes back to
1729

when his Quaker ancestors
fled the Emerald Isle.

Three centuries pass by in a second and
we're here

in the middle of
The Vietnam War

and he speaks of
"a passion for peace...preventing war...building peace."

Yeah yeah...sure sure!

Carpet bombing Cambodia
the famous Nixon duplicity

the "credibility gap" opening
between what he says and what he does.

Oh there are protests
he has 5 eggs hurlers.

"Splatsplatsplatsplat and splat!"
Only one near hit.

And one man protesting
the price of a pint

up'd( for the occasion )to
one shilling and jaysus seven pence.

What's the world
coming to?

School kids waving
their plastic( in slow mo )

American flags
on little plastic sticks.

I raise my flag.
I raise my...voice

shooting my mouth off
with a great shout:

'TRICKY DICKY! TRICKY DICKY!
WOULD YOU BUY A USED CAR FROM THIS MAN!"

Several secret service scowl.
My words hit him...Nixon frowns.

Character assassination.

Mr. McCann
aka "The Bicycle Man!"

curses me
in Irish.

After all he is
my Irish teacher.

D'anam leis an diabhal...Ó Diomasaigh!"
("Your soul to the devil...Dempsey!")

"THE TIME HAS COME TO CALL
A ***** A ****** SHOVEL..."

I yell as
I get a clip around the ear.

McCann holds his hand
over my mouth.

Then suddenly Nixon
is no longer

there.

The hurled words
disappear into the air.

Us school boys
***** damply back to double Maths.

The De La Salle
Academy looming up before us.

Mr. McCann
hoovers near.

I cover both
my ears.

But he only tousles
my hair.

"Ahhh mo amadán beag cróga!"
( "Ahhh my brave little fool!")

"Maith an bhuachaill...maith an bhuachaill!"
( "Good boy...good boy!")

He grins.
Slips me a sixpence.

I sing the new Led Zep
only released that day.

"So now you'd better stop and rebuild all your ruins,
for peace and trust can win the day despite of all your losing."

Being only 12
I had done what had to be done.

My political life
had only just begun.

THOUGHT EXPERIMENT

Albert catches
the train to Vienna.

It is moving
at the speed of light.

He puts the torch to ON...
but it doesn't come....on.

He's forgotten to
put batteries in.

The practical always
gets him.

Instead, he watches his head
decapitated  in the dark.

floating in the window
staring back at

him
(self).

His reflection surreally
more real than he..

His mind caught
between two worlds.

The train dashes out of
this tunnelled darkness

& suddenly reality is all
sunlight & cows

trees frantically trying to
keep up with the train.

He also has a theory about
relatives.

He takes out his notebook
& amidst all

the hieroglyph of
calculations

he makes an important
note to self

in a scrawl only he
can decipher

"Don't forget
batteries!"

HAVING MISTAKEN YOU PERHAPS FOR YESTERDAY?

"Am I supposed to be dying. . ?"

Death
that person from Porlock

answers
quietly ". . .yes."

"gently gently gentleness ...
...the dark was talking to the dead"

Louis I loved
your "drunkenness

of things being
various"

you so "incorrigibly plural"

with your rather curious
Englished Irishness.

Me when I was
the me of 12 and a day

walking 30 miles
home from Dublin

with the record
of your voice

clutched in my hand

not noticing the miles
"Time was away

...and somewhere else."

AND NEVER BE FORGOT

the New Year tiptoes
across the sky
falls in bells and snow

I feel like a door
without a handle
or a handle without.. .

...a dor:
atop a ******* tip
like it's King of the Castle

a door that (opens
into the nowhere  of
time gone by

drunk revelers
bawling out Auld Lang Syne
puke coloured pavements

the furniture wears sheets
like a child's concept of ghosts
their wooden legs stick out underneath

a kiss
all that separates
the 20th from the 21st century

COMES A MOUSEY


"Comes a headache you can lose it in a day,
Comes a toothache see the dentist right away;
Comes love nothing can be done! "


she wiggles her fingers
she wiggles her toes
tries to mouth the words

she gurgles in her cot
waves her head about
hits her mobile toys

I sing her old jazz
standards from the first
day of her life

from tiny tot
to the toddler
of now

she can join in
and sing
with relish and delight

and demand of Daddy
"Sing me mousey
Sing me mousey!"

"Comes the measles, you can quarantine a room
Comes a mousey, you can chase it with a broom
Comes love, nothing can be done!"


Comes love, nothing can be done

Comes love...nothing can be done

Comes love . . .nothing. . .can be. . . done

GRANDFATHER GORDON

Grandfather Gordon
always scratching his wooden leg
insists "It itches!"

always a different explanation
how he lost the leg
enough to fill a book

Grandfather Gordon
scratching the air
where his leg should be

Grandfather Gordon's
wooden leg now
a tommy gun...a sword...a unicorn's horn

"Give me me leg...
...ya daft wee buggers!"
begging for his leg back

Grandfather Gordon's gone
his wooden leg lives on
dusty in a corner

I stroke his leg
remembering him
it itches in my heart

LOSING MY MARBLES

The bear rears up
against the cuckoo clock

arms outstretched as if
to catch that dammed bird

when it 9
o'clocks!

A tiger snoozes
in front of the fire

unaware of the spark
that throws itself upon

its tattered tail.

Firelight & candlelight
gleams in the beast's deadly eye.

A golden eagle
spreads its wings

above the mantlepiece
as if it would

****** the gilded frame
that holds a honeymoon.

I am a player
of marbles

upon the floor
nose to the ground

eyeball to eyeball
with my host's tiny son.

We watch in awe
as the blue(slowly)yellow

marble(slowly) rolls into
the tiger's gaping jaws.

"That doesn't count!"
host's son shouts

as the host snorts
awake to see

me with my hand in
the fore mentioned jaws

the tiger's tails
just beginning to catch

"Fire...fire! host roars
throws his G&T

over the smouldering tiger.

The tiger gives up
the blue & yellow marble.

We return to
our little game.

Our host pours
himself into

an armchair
fat as he

and another
G&T.

I lose.

The stuffed animals
snigger.

MURDERING HER SELF

she felt like
her own understudy
who never gets to go on

oh how she hated
her public persona
could ****** herself

"Am I really this...
. . .shallow?" she cries
in the depths of her despair

"Oh how I wish I
could be anyone but me!"
she tells the mirror

she leaves her real self
still trapped in the mirror
became the self they all knew

THIS OLD HOUSE

a river
of people
flow through this house

sharing time
on this earth
with sunlight and shadow

a parrot
a cat
a dog

people come
people gone
first many then none

the wall paper
goes from hideous
("This will have to go!")

to nicer
every now and then
and then again

hideous as
once
was

strip away wallpaper
to find children's heights
and ages in pencil

small Paul
shoots up above
an envious elder brother

who always
begrudges him
his new found height

a do-it-yourselfer
becomes at once
an emotional archeologist

here a wall is
broken through
one room becomes two

the house leaves
a trail of owners
then landlord after landlord

my own good self
reflected in
the past of others

the ghost of who
they have been
walking from decade to decade

a couple from 1963
newly arrived
newly married

after a lifetime
(so it seems)of living
in sin

he half Irish
she ever so English
with a touch of Dutch

there now
a spinster
dying alone in a sunset

a cross section
of humans
all kinds

the house
a kaleidoscope
of times

people
a living
palimpsest  

the house
contains them all
Time in full flood

a ghost
walks through a wall
gets stuck

between 1907
and 1967
grandfather clock bongs

and bongs again
Time is so
fragile a thing

I too( I see )
will leaves this house
become as one

with the many who
flow through
this place

this place now
a place no more
in some future

that will
not contain
(strangely)me

humans
the flotsam and jetsam
of Time

"..HAVING NEW EYES..."

here, it appeared
the house paused
upon the mountain top

as if to gaze
upon a sunset
and then: move on again

startled to be caught
on the move
or emerging out of mist

as if revealing
the secret that
houses walked

we always laughed
called it
"the ghost that walks"

or the trees
running down the mountain side
to greet us

warmly welcoming us
with outstretched branches
speaking with the wind's voice

a tiny flower curved around
the toe of my boot
a gentle reminder to look...really look

a bell melted into the air
becoming the silence
it had broken

WHAT THIS ENTIRE WORLDSPIDERWEB IS ABOUT...

The day of the funeral
an intense cold.

The lions roaring
in the zoo beyond

Fluntern Cemetery.

The confluence of
the rivers he loved

obscured from view
as if forever.

The sun too
a milky misty light.

The silence of the necropolis
broken only by an old deaf man

asking all the time:
"Who...is to be...buried here?"

And when he hears, repeats:
"But who is James Joyce?"

Grave No. 1449 is
meant to be temporary

but even in death
he is Ireland's outcast.

His daughter's madness flickers:
"Cet imbécile...what is he.."

Again a roar of lions.

""...doing under the ground
when will he decide to leave!"

Again the deaf man's question.

"He's watching us
all the time."

As indeed he is.
Life but a Work in Progress.

The author leaves
his death

walks abroad
in all his words.

"bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnth­unntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk"

THE TREE WALKS HOME WITH ME

my uncle Seanie
feet planted firmly in this field

growing from the soil
my uncle Seanie

a silhouette in sunset
as natural as a tree

I climb up
into the branches of his hands and

the tree walks home with me
always in my dreams I am

always climbing up into my uncle
his footsteps falling forever in my mind.

YOUR HAIR DREAMS

Your hair
(fine as a baby’s fine)      

so soft
softly

your hair
falls asleep

before the rest
of you.

Your hair
dreams of being

stroked
caressed.

The rest of you
follows suit

& soon

all of you
is sleeping.


Your hair
dreaming of my hands.

Your body
dreaming of my hands.


Dream & Reality
merging.

OF WHATEVER COULD BE

She sat quiet still
where she had sat

for months now
as if she were

the statue of her
self

like a figure
carved on a tomb.

Gradually the room
withdraw from her.

Become only a room.

Her comb no longer
her comb.

An object merely.
Not loved by anyone.

The love
drained out of it.

Here jars
of half used creams.

There a powder puff
looking confused.

New unused
perfumes.

They all have withdrawn
their allegiance to her.

Becoming things...mere things
now and at the hour of her death.

Here her self
at 21

laughing in
B&W.

The only thing to retain
her sense of self.

Now the world
abandons her.

Objects thrown into
a black bin bag.

A room empty
of whatever could be.

BRIAN DEMPSEY'S BROTHER

So, I see
you are the future

people of a 1000 years
beyond me.

My words see you
even though I can not.

I am the long dead
how curious it is

to be so
and to have you

read me
or of my ever

thinking that you would
hear my paper voice.

Finding it hard to believe
this scribbled scrap of paper

could outlive
the mind that. . .

never mind
never mind

so you are the new
here and now

and I am
not.

Am nothing.

My only merit being this
somehow survived.

An ordinary human
from 2017.

Paper I
must assume is

an outdated mode
of transport

for thought
or word.


I am as precious
as papyri

to you my future
archeologist.

Maybe now
mind merely talks to mind.

And so you are amazed
to find me

"...wandering about in country dark
the wind roaring in French

as it prowls and howls
about a house

somewhere near
Saint-Priest-des-Champs.

I mock the storm
howling at the death

of a loved one
to a night that does not care..."

It is like I have never been. . .

So, people of a 1000 years
from now

all you can know
is that I was

Brian Dempsey's
brother

and that a night
finds me here

in my despair
calling out his name

the only thing
I own.

I am just this
side of sane.

Perhaps by now
you have abolished death

and life goes on and on and on
without end?

Or even eased despair
to such an extent that. . .

LET'S FACE FACTS

The mind is like a sponge
absorbing the spilt ketchup

of the moment gone
horribly wrong.

Or if one were
to rub two atoms together

they would burst
instantly into a poem.

Or
not.

Words go to jail if
they fail to capture

the state of mind
of the person who

believed writing was merely
putting pen to paper.

The writing untangles itself
and word for word reenters

the tip of
the pen.

The brain is made from
papier mache

but can be cast in bronze
or set in stone.

Some people don't even know
they are host to a brain.

A man whose name escapes
me now

but was an anagram
for toilets

cried that he could connect
"nothing with nothing."

I envied him and
was jealous of his seeing.

**** my doppelgänger who
autocorrects everything I

(dognapper leg
engorged palp
glopped anger
"Grapple Ogden!")

have strived to
manifest here.

I am an atom short
of a universe.

SETTING FIRE TO THE FLAMES

In the candle flame
she sees everything

that cannot be...

...yet needs to be

- spoken.

Music touches her mind
kindly asking if it can help?

The blank page
is amazed

at what it finds
written upon itself.

The music ceases.

The candle is blown out.

Words exist
that long for a mouth

...to speak them.

In the sleeping lady's mind

the candle still

burns

dreaming its own reality.

OUTRUNNING THE WORLD

You ran and
the world couldn't keep up with you.

Here, in your third year
you discovered falling.

As if the world had
tripped up.

You look at your grazed knee
amazed at your self.

Blood oozes
from your chubby little skin.

I cry.
You do not.

You are just amazed that
there is an inside to you

that can somehow
leak out.

You dip a finger in
taste the redness.

Your laughter
is a spring

that bubbles out.

You can not understand
my tears.

My feeling your pain
on your behalf.

Or in this case
your "not-pain."

"Daddy - not cry!"
you comfort me.

You dry my eyes
with golden curls.

"Tilly run again...see?"

And you do so
to prove a point.

And once again
you are immortal

outrun the world.

Leaving your father
further and further

behind you.

You run into your future.
Become your self.

A tiny thin scar
the only reminder

of a pain only I
can remember.

A LUCKY SO & SO

As he lay
in the pool of his death

the motorcycle continuing on
a little further without him

before it too
lay down

as if to sleep

he thought the blood
was like a child

wetting the bed

and the fear of
someone discovering it

in the cold light
of morning

he began
to cry

just like the boy
of then

though this was now
and very far

from the place
of his childhood

even as the stink
of petrol

enveloped him

a bird sang

& he thought: “This is the most
beautiful thing...! ” he had ever heard

& his heart grew sad
& silent to hear it

concentrating on it

& on his shirt

emerged a badly-
-drawn map of the world
(but recognisable as such)

(America being a little
lopsided)

drawn in blood
seeping through his fingers

(continental drift slowly joining them together)

“I am half in love
with easeful Death...”

he quoted to himself

and wondered who had wrote it
and where he had ever heard it

“Yeats? Keats? ”

Death as if
anyone might have imagined him

turning up
at a fancy dress party

and only coming second
to a fat guy from Hastings

who obviously had a better costumiers
than Death

(Death thinking this fat bloke’s next)

looked on
dispassionately

as if he had seen it
all before.

There was nothing
new under the sun.

This job could be
so boring.

Humans make such a drama
out of the simple act of dying.

Always the same song & dance act!

Death held his hand
& then...let go.

When he awoke
Death
was nowhere to be seen

and the hospital
bloomed around him

gazing into the fluorescent
tube of light

life seemed almost
too bright

hurting his eyes

a nice pair
of legs

approaching him
& telling him

(he watched the words rise & fall
in the perfect mechanism

of her chest
of which he couldn’t take his eyes off of)

telling him
in no uncertain manner

as if scolding him
(had he wet the bed?)

“Well, you’re
a lucky
so & so!"

"...là-bas, là-bas, dans la montagne..."

Your purple lips
blackberry stained kisses

from a summer that could never
die

as real as the present
moment is.

Now this moment
in which you die

I kiss your purple lips
whisper a final goodbye.

The earth turns
in its sleep

gazes out into
empty space.

The constellation of grief
scrawled across the sky.

"...SO I DID WEAVE MYSELF INTO THE SENSE..."
( In memory of my Aunt Peggy )

the candle carves
your face
out of the dark

you waver
with its flicker
become a mask

I watch your words
float across the space
between us

I see every syllable
all your pauses
you each and every punctuation

you recite
Herbert
with an American accent

I try to pull you
out of the dark
of the past

but this is all
memory will allow
of you

I say your name
to make you more real
"Peggy...Peggy!" I call to you

now far away
from that lost day
your daughter's love

reminds me of
who you were
to me

your Chicagoan voice
telling me: "Gee....
you've got curls like a girl's!"

SOUL OF THE AGE

Now, is the summer
of this. . .our content

made glorious
by love

the sunlight
kiss of leaves

yet through a glass
darkly

I am tolled by old
St. Saviour’s bell

back to
a December’d day

a Thames frozen
from Westminister to London Bridge

where Will
buries brother

young Edmund Shakespeare
on this the last day

of the year
1607.

I stand on the same
flagstones

as the King’s Men
gathered in black

rub shoulders with
Burbage

a Hamlet come
to life

a summer of tourists
walking through us

as the order
from the Book of the Dead

solemnly intoned

as his younger brother
is lowered

into an unmarked
grave.

Ferrymen call
from across the centuries

“Eastward **. . .
. . .Westward **!”

as Time slips
loose of its moorings

mastiffs strain
at the leash

await the bear
to be baited.

Methinks I see
the great Globe itself

flag unfurled
upon an horizon

“the forenoon knell
of the great bell”

as I return
to my self

and Shakespeare
stares at a wall

in Silver
Street.

She gave me
the map of

her
self.

It was exact &
up to the moment

but changed
as we moved

through the landscape
of the future.

Now with heartbreak
it is

out of date with
a section missing.


Where we should meet
is a crease

so worn and torn
we can see right through

to the reality
of defeat.

I look to the stars
for guidance

to orientate me
through all the hate

but it is too late
the map

no longer
exist.

THE BIGGEST COWARD OF THEM ALL

Was I not scared?
I was not!

I was ****** terrified!

I ran towards
the German's defence.

Bullets stuttering
all around me

trying to pronounce
the word: "Death."

Took it in the shoulder.
Took it in the thigh.

Ha ha...flesh wounds.

Couldn't imagine being dead.
I was enraged

that they were
attempting to **** me.

Pain wasn't allowed
to touch me.

Me...yeah me the biggest
coward of them all.

What was I like!

They saw me
as I saw them.

The grenade looming large
in their startled eyes.

Their lips saying
a silent prayer.

They were only boys.
Much more terrified

than I!

Their screams even now
shattering my sleep.

Each night
for the rest of my life

I see them die.
I forever cry.

War
the biggest coward

of them all.

THE ESSENTIAL INGREDIENT

"Oh love is teasing
and love is pleasing. . ."

my sister sings to the cake
she is about to bake.

"And love is a pleasure
when first it's new. . ."

The rich Christmas mix
listens with all of its ingredients.

"Ahhhh but as love gets older
sure love gets colder. . ."

the brandy & fruit
weep into the bowl

"...and fades away like
the morning dew."

There is a lot of brandy in the mix.
There is a lot of brandy in sis.

Sad Irish folk songs
appear to be

the essential ingredient.

A pink and green balloon
clings to the ceiling

refusing to come down
by poker or by broom.

Takes refuge in the corner
just above the Christmas star.

My heart is breaking
with baking.

"I know my love
by his way of talking..."

flour in her hair
making her so ghostly

as if the original protagonist
came back from the grave

and sang her heart out

". ..and I know my love
by his eyes so blue..."

until the creambuttersugar
is all fluffy.

He voice adding a zing
of lemon peel.

At this stage
the eggs are beaten

". . .and if my love leaves me
what will I do?"

Slowly slowly whipped
to form peaks.

Now the cake is tipsy.
So - is sis.

I am drunk
on her singing.

My mind is in mourning
for all the love loved

and lost.

She daubs my nose and laughs.
I lick it off.

The tip of my tongue
a windscreen wiper!

And so the brandy fruit mixture
is folded in.

I can still taste
her singing.

Her cake the only cake
I could ever ate and oh

her almond icing!

These songs forever
her.

And still she sings
down all the years

and I love her versions
the best!

"...and a troubled mind sure
can know no rest

and still she cries bonny boys are few

and if my love leaves me
what will I do!"

A KISS OF RAIN

written inside him
with wild calligraphy
the littlest of her smiles

it was raining hard
the kiss hardly a kiss
unmaking-making the world

the kiss
making him all at once
aware of his existence

the kiss now
making them oblivious
of a world turned to rain

rain & laughter rain&laughter;
he kisses her like a happy
ever after

"PERDU..PERDU!"

She felt like
an inside out

left hand glove
lost in the snow

only missed when it was
too late.

Once a desired accessory
much longed for

now merely
an item

turning to
*******.

THE YEAR OF THE FIRE
MONKEY

He crossed the border
of who he was.

Smuggling himself
out  into the world.

An illegal self.

So, here he was
at 35,000 feet.

A man with no past.
A man with no shadow.

Inventing who he
could be.

A kind of reincarnation
of personality.

A moment by moment
existence.

Never too sure
who he really was.

Time to be
someone else.

Hiding behind hs
Village People moustache.

He had to laugh.
"Young man...!" he sang.

The inflight movie was
Running with Scissors.

But he wasn't
interested.

"Mmmmmm...little wing
fin...banking?"

7 Down - seven letters.
Beginning with an A....ending in an N.

"Mmmmm!" Again.
And again: "Mmmmmm!"

He glanced out the window
as if the clouds could tell him.

"Aileron!"
he blurted out loudly

startling the portly lady
in the aisle seat

spilling her
black coffee.

A sugar lump
dissolving in her lap.

Staining her pleats.

"Pardon...Madam...Pardon!"
he dabbing at her with a napkin.

She slapping his hand
away.

She reminded him of...who?
Yes...yes...Sidney Greenstreet!

In The Mask of Denitros
from '44 was it?

Her husband( ha ha )a dead
ringer for Peter Lorre.

He a cryptic
crossword of self.

Never too sure
even what the clues meant.

"Dog fight...taking a turn
WW1...to the Max!"

2 across...13 letters.
Beginning with an I....ending in an N!"

Ha...know this one!
WW1 a dead giveaway.

An Immelman turn.

His mind flying now
above the moment.

Coming into land.
"Con mèo....con mèo!"

He repeated and repeated
trying to catch up with his Vietnamese.

Time now

to turn back

Time.

FROM EPOCH TO EON

the fossils live
in a cardboard box
under her bed

dust on the fossils
the soft patina of time
a wet fingertip makes them shine

ammonites and echinoids
are her friends
she hasn't any human friends

500 million years just
a
snip

she scrapes the humans
off the landscape
imagines glaciers out for a stroll

a fossil perched upon
a piano
absorbing the music

the grandfather clock
( each second long as an age )
at odds with the cuckoo clock

its half past
a millennium
or two

the little yellow road
threading itself through the countryside
the patchwork quilt of fields

at the end of the road
the moon waiting patiently
for her to catch up

NON SERVIAM

Even at 7
found Catholic transubstantiation

hard to swallow.

Much preferred the Protestant
metaphor better.

The priest exposing the host
in the monstrance

the congregation bowing
in veneration.

"Corpus Domini nostri..."

Now...holy cow
Jesus is leaping

from the tip of my tongue
Christ...clinging

to my palate hanging
on for dear life

before going to pieces
slipping down my...gulp

. . .oe... soph...a...gus .

". . .In vitam eternam. Amen."

The incense from the thurible
as it sways

making me feel so
si...aghhhhh...ck!

Me a little Lucifer
a lightbringer ...my own morning star.

Afraid I am
going to throw

Him up

the second coming
as I sit in my pew and stew

transubstantiation is
the pits.

ONE SMALL STEP

The moon delights
in its shadow play

wantonly displays herself
now coyly hides

behind the flimsiest of clouds
making light of dark...dark light.

Teases
our senses

acts out
our romantic notions

as if a poet
had hung her there

suspended in time
and thought

created only of words
& our desires

this orb
an actor

in our play
THE ART OF LOVE.

She belongs
in songs

exclusively the month
of June

a banal rhyme.

Here
on our honeymoon

men walk
across her face

bringing her back
to reality

as if she had gone
insane

believing she was
a poet’s plaything.

Blanching now the wood:
“I have also relied on the kindness of poets!”

All her reflected glory
lost

amongst dust and rocks
little steps and giant steps.

Was it just a tale
I heard told

of Persian storytellers
suing NASA

for spoiling how
she should be seen?

Behold!

Bold as a newly minted
wife

I unbind the moon
set her loose

let her run free
again in the wilderness

of
imaginations

free from scientific
discourse

as I dance with
my newly acquired husband.

A mariachi band plays
MOONLIGHT SERENADE

in our chiaroscuro
of love

the moon
smiling down on

our dreams
( our dreams ).

& AGAIN: "YES!"

He stepped out of
the photo

stretched and
gave a great yawn.

He had been standing by that
wall it seemed forever.

The sun shone
in black&white.

Outside it was
night.

He had never seen  his grandson
who lived in colour

on the mantlepiece just
newly born.

He strode out boldly
in 3-D

with the strange gait of a 2-D'er
trying to put his best foot forward.

It was a long long way to
the photo of Tipperary

and the smiling newborn boy
but by God he made it.

His grandson lay smiling
in a shaft of sunlight

that rocked him gently
and gently.

He stepped into the colour
and turned into a nice sepia.

He held his grandson
against his chest

smiling
in Kodachrome.

Then put him back
in the frame.

He managed to return
to his own black& white

as headlights travelled
across the ceiling

before the telephone rang
and the morning awoke

and sleepy feet from above
went to answer it with a yawn:

"Yes...yes. . ."

& again:
"YES!"

BIG HAPPY

“You make me
so happy! ”

She says.

“Oh, I say! ”
I say.

“It’s such
a big happy

but it’s made up
of all small happies! ”

“The small happy
I can hold
in my hand

but the big happy
is like the sky! ”

She clutches me
hugs my knee
kisses my kneecap

then goes
out again

shouting to the dolly
she left sitting in the sand pit.

“It’s ok...I’m back! ”

EARTH DATE

I thought she was
out of this world

we agreed to meet
Friday the 13th

on the third rock
from the sun

but
she didn't come.

****** Martians
they're all the same!

Nem élhetek, se nem pusztulnak tovább
(I CANNOT LIVE NOR DIE ANY LONGER)

For Miklós Radnóti

I build this
bridge of words

so that I can
walk back over time

and take
your hand.

You to me
this man

made only of
words

talking out of a book.

And I only able
to touch you

with these used words
of mine

I clasp your hand
in mine

call you friend.

MEETING MY MOTHER

Here, I meet
my mother

before she has
even thought of me.

Here, she
a turning
twenty something or other

& I only
the long longed for

the sly shy twinkle
in her eye.

And now I am
her little boy

playing with photographs
scattered across sunshine
linoleum.

Here now, I
a twenty something or other

& here
I am

older

than she
was then

meeting my mother
in the spilt photographs

that scatter time
across this Autumn floor.

THE WHO OF WHAT WE ARE

The fog strips us
right down to our

voices
only

leaves out the shape or
the skin we're in &

even what ***
we are

we lose society's references
how it elects to see us

stumble around in
this cotton wool

& somehow now
we re-emerge

our selves
tentatively again

you most definitely  woman
I made man again

white skin
embracing
black skin

nothing now
but

love

A DOOR AJAR ON REALITY

The blackbird led
his wife

up the garden path

as if the crazy paving
had been laid especially

for them &
their kind.

I thought it odd
that

they walked instead
of flew

as if they were acting
the human.

They both
deep in conversation

about bird
current affairs

or gossip
about those noisy robins.

When they hit the deck
they both stood

in a deck chair
each

continuing what
they had been

conversing
about.

Maybe blackbirds
had taken over

the world
& I

the last human
to know.

Or, all humans
had been changed

into blackbirds.

They suddenly
made loud caw.

I took to the air
& flew.

DA VINCI'S GHOST

I listen to
classical guitar in the dark

with only a single
candle for company.

These my teenage years.

Music and flame
travel through my mind

unveiling thought.

Da Vinci's
Vitruvian man

pinned to the wall
with most pins missing.

He comes alive
in the candle's flicker.

Gets into a flap
each time the door opens.

Little brother is spooked
by that Vitruvian stare

but is fascinated by the fact
that he exists

within a circle
within a square.

Like a priest I
dress my self in the garb

of Leonardo's words.

"Write what the soul is.

Illustrate whence comes....madness.
Whence...tears.
Whence...dreams!"

The whences make him wince.

As he sees it:  "...it is like a man
travelling through time

in his dream machine
and arriving at his own

dying
becoming his own

ghost."

Our mother's voice
calls him

and he is grateful to escape
his own thought.

*

Now, here I am
at your death

as you step inside
the circle
(inside the square).

You stare back at me
with that Vitruvian stare

and I " try to write
what the soul is."

THE CICADAS GOING CRAZY

The night all
darkness and lilac

as if scent and absence
of light  had solidified

congealing about
the waltzing couple

drifting accidentally
on purpose away

from the gaudy
ballroom.

Both now not
daring to

breath in case this
moment would dissolve

the magic
evaporate.

His clumsy hand upon her
naked back for the first

time ever
this foreveer

the flex of her
shoulder blades as if

she were a swan
about to take flight

and be gone...gone

that terrible thought
tolling inside his head.

They only able to see
each other by touch

alone
feeling his breath upon

her right eybrow
she nuzzling into

an Adam's apple that
kept bobbing up

ooops and that was
not all.

He lost in the bob
of her hair

she only had it done
that day.

Their hips brushing against
lilac and darkness

dancing on into
the witching hour

the fadey ballroom music
like an half forgotten

something or other
the cicadas sudden

silence
dissolving into

this mistimed kiss
that nevertheless

he kissed an eye
she kissed a nose

that still
took time's breath away

the cicadas
going crazy.